Any CRT fans on the forum? Monitors, broadcast, tvs

[roobarb]

8 hours ago, MikeJ said:

I’m using 240p Test Suite on a PlayStation (you can get it for a lot of consoles). 

Nice thanks.. should just be a matter of choosing a MiSTer core and getting the right rom then 

[Ninja Doctor]

There’s a pvm near me for £100 but it’s only a 14” and only has svideo at best. Worth it? There was a rgb/ypbpr one also for £100 but I missed that one. 

[dataDave]

58 minutes ago, Ninja Doctor said:

There’s a pvm near me for £100 but it’s only a 14” and only has svideo at best. Worth it? There was a rgb/ypbpr one also for £100 but I missed that one. 

 

I'd wait for an RGB one personally. Or, buy this one and then upgrade it to an RGB one when you get the earliest chance.

[Ninja Doctor]

I already have a 14” tv that does rgb, is a Pvm that much of an upgrade?

[Colonel Panic]

It might be moddable. 

[dataDave]

1 hour ago, Ninja Doctor said:

I already have a 14” tv that does rgb, is a Pvm that much of an upgrade?

 

There's no going back to consumer-grade CRTs. At least, not for me.

 

The S-video on that PVM might look better than the RGB on your TV, and as Col. Panic says it might be moddable (most likely is).

 

BVMs on the other hand are a bit too good. They can make real consoles look like PC emulation. 15min sessions on mine left me with zinging eyeballs. I really want it fixing ASAP.

[Ninja Doctor]

It’s this one: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/384814047219

 

the seller had another 14” which sold today for £100. This one is a relist since it got no bids before. 

[Colonel Panic]

Late 90s, decent enough and RGB moddable. I spent more on a 9" from 2003 that's S-Video only which I'm using with my MiSTer at the moment. 

[dataDave]

I'd bite his hand off.

 

The RGB mod isn't even all that hard, is it?

[MrSpiggott]

I doubt it has proper pvr internals. It’s a composite monitor really, used for cameras and such, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this has a consumer tube and electronics. Still good quality though, as all Sony TVs were at that time.

[watusi]

They are only ever going to go up in price too. I have a Sony PVM 14 inch PVM. It’s very lovely

[Colonel Panic]

Quite easy to mod that particular model, apparently. But as always, be wary of safely discharging the anode cap of a CRT before taking it apart because that voltage can kill you.

[MikeJ]

Personally I think the current extreme pricing in PVMs is a bit of a YouTube fed fuss based on the fact that Americans are generally stuck with poor quality connections and seeing something over RGB (which most of their consumer TVs don’t have) is a revelation. They do give a nice picture though if you get a good one and don’t have to pay the earth for it, considering you can still get decent consumer screens for almost or actually free. 

 

My concerns about that particular one would be:

 

The screen is small which is rubbish if you are not sat at a desk in front of it;

It’s white which normally means it was in a hospital which normally means very heavy usage/worn out tube;

No RGB but s-video will probably look good

 

[MrSpiggott]

1 hour ago, MikeJ said:

Personally I think the current extreme pricing in PVMs is a bit of a YouTube fed fuss based on the fact that Americans are generally stuck with poor quality connections and seeing something over RGB (which most of their consumer TVs don’t have) is a revelation. They do give a nice picture though if you get a good one and don’t have to pay the earth for it, considering you can still get decent consumer screens for almost or actually free. 

 

My concerns about that particular one would be:

 

The screen is small which is rubbish if you are not sat at a desk in front of it;

It’s white which normally means it was in a hospital which normally means very heavy usage/worn out tube;

No RGB but s-video will probably look good

 

You're right, I've just looked it up, it's a medical monitor. 

I've gone through the schematics as well and it has a different tube and control board to PVMs of that era.

£100 seems like a lot of money for something that's going to need quite a lot of work to get RGB enabled neatly. I suppose it depends on how much scart enabled 14" Sony TV's are going for today.

.

[Ninja Doctor]

Sounds like I should give it a swerve and stick with my consumer rgb 14” tv. 

[MrSpiggott]

6 hours ago, Ninja Doctor said:

Sounds like I should give it a swerve and stick with my consumer rgb 14” tv. 

Usually I’m surrounded by more than a dozen PVM’s and BVM’s, all different sizes, some 16x9, others 4x3. If I was to plug a calibrated, broadcast spec RGB input into them, they’d all look a little bit different. They’re all over 20 years old and somewhere along the line to decrepitness. Now if you saw one in isolation, you’d think it looked fantastic, but there are degrees of fantastic.

What I’m trying to say is if your current display looks good, is sharp, no dot crawl, no cross talk or ghosting then keep it. Don’t gamble on a PVM that might not be as good.

[dvdx2]

14 hours ago, MikeJ said:

Personally I think the current extreme pricing in PVMs is a bit of a YouTube fed fuss based on the fact that Americans are generally stuck with poor quality connections and seeing something over RGB (which most of their consumer TVs don’t have) is a revelation. 

 

Yeah true - they don’t like paying for crts either and their kerb finds all seem to be svideo or lower. They seem to have a hard time picking up pro monitors too, and will seriously argue that consumer sets are almost as good as pvms (which is untrue) and that svideo is either 90% as good as RGB or just as good, (both statements are BS), obviously because they get hold of RGB sets or pro monitors.

[dvdx2]

There is even RF and composite gushing from guys that obviously haven’t seen a retro game running in RGB.

[dvdx2]

1 hour ago, MrSpiggott said:

What I’m trying to say is if your current display looks good, is sharp, no dot crawl, no cross talk or ghosting then keep it. Don’t gamble on a PVM that might not be as good.

I have never seen a pvm that wasn’t 10 times better image wise than a consumer set, even if it has poor focus or convergence issues.

[MrSpiggott]

30 minutes ago, dvdx2 said:

I have never seen a pvm that wasn’t 10 times better image wise than a consumer set, even if it has poor focus or convergence issues.

There are some pretty nasty ones out there, I’ve been working with them for 30 years and have seen just about every fault possible.  They are brilliant monitors, I’ve got a couple at home, but buyer beware. Just because it’s a PVM doesn’t mean it’s going to look good.

[MrSpiggott]

One bit of buyers advice. Avoid the early ones, you can identify them by the manual 75ohm terminator switches under each of the BNCs. They seemed to suffer from a lot of image problems.

Try to look for newer ones with serial interfaces, or that have the cut out where the serial BNC would go. Or if you can't see the back, they usually have a large indicator lamp right at the top of the screen. I use a few or these that are still going strong after 20 years.

[MrSpiggott]

I've read the discussions in this thread about the quality differences between RGB, S-video and composite and dvdx2 is absolutely right, there are some very large differences.

I thought it would be really easy to get some objective evidence showing the differences between the systems by connecting a broadcast spec video generator outputting various sweep patterns into a PVM and showing at what point video information is lost (filtered) and obscured with interference.

The differences are really apparent on the screen, but trying to capture that on a camera without moira fringing corrupting everything has been a bugger!

Here's the best I could come up with, it shows the differences between RGB and composite. You can see the point at which luminance information is lost and the chrominance portion of the signal starts to cause colour interference. I also wanted to show how S-Video retains luminance resolution, but has problems with colour, but just couldn't get a good enough photo.

What I wanted to highlight is that if you are only using composite or S-video then I wouldn't recommend paying extra for a PVM. It's a brilliant monitor, but can't work miracles. 

 

 

[Dig Dug]

Fuckin’ finally!

£20 for the 2. Just need to source a remote for the Matsui. Did a quick GameCube test on s-video scart adapter and first impressions on the Matsui were very good. Very clean image compared to most screens I’ve seen.

 

Not been able to play retro regularly since moving out 2 years ago because my Phillips was too big to move. Very happy.

[JamesC]

Got given this lovely Trinitron by a friend who's clearing out a house before she moves in.

It's not a top end model, it only has mono sound and just a single scart and single composite input. It's a really nice looking set though. It's 21", so a step up from a bedroom portable but not too much of a monster to move around.

It has a really nice flat glass screen. Apparently these can be a bit dodgy when it comes to geometry and can also cause problems with light guns sometimes. A test has proved the geometry is pretty bloody good though, and a quick blast of Point Blank didn't cause any trouble.

The pic doesn't really do it justice (terrible lighting and rubbish phone camera) but it's a great little set. The size and the boxy design are what I really like about it.

[watusi]

Off with Covid this week so took the opportunity to clean-up my CRT setup. Stored away my 14" PVM and Trinitrons for now.

 

[Ninja Doctor]

I can store that pvm for you…

[roobarb]

On 04/08/2022 at 16:17, watusi said:

Off with Covid this week so took the opportunity to clean-up my CRT setup. Stored away my 14" PVM and Trinitrons for now.

 

What's the huge black and silver fight stick? Looks Great!

[watusi]

6 minutes ago, roobarb said:

What's the huge black and silver fight stick? Looks Great!

It’s a HORI fighting edge 

 

https://www.profightstick.com/hori-fighting-edge-review/

 

It’s a lovely thing. The metal top is all nice and cold and inviting 

[Swainy]

Has anyone got any experience with a Goodmans 14” GTVC100S?

 

I bought it (only paid a tenner) hoping to use it as another vertical screen for my MiSTer but looking closer at the Scart port, it says AV Euro and sure enough I can’t get a picture with my MiSTer but it does work fine with PAL consoles such as my MasterSystem. So I’m wondering if anyone knows if there is a service menu for this TV that would allow an NTSC input?

[MrSpiggott]

31 minutes ago, Swainy said:

Has anyone got any experience with a Goodmans 14” GTVC100S?

 

I bought it (only paid a tenner) hoping to use it as another vertical screen for my MiSTer but looking closer at the Scart port, it says AV Euro and sure enough I can’t get a picture with my MiSTer but it does work fine with PAL consoles such as my MasterSystem. So I’m wondering if anyone knows if there is a service menu for this TV that would allow an NTSC input?

I've got a feeling the SCART is only wired for composite, which was quite common on lower price TVs. (Can't find the specs online) 

If that's the case you can mod it to accept RGB, but it's not a simple job.